Communication in a personal computer (PC) based environment having Internet connectivity is typically established based on e-mail addresses and/or Internet protocol (IP) addresses. Many unwanted connections occur with no anonymity or control over who communicates with whom.
A user of a PC may receive many unwanted e-mail messages with file attachments (e.g., SPAM) because the user's e-mail address is widely distributed or published somewhere. Some of the e-mail messages may contain computer viruses that can hurt the user's PC. Many businesses and some individual users set up firewalls to prevent certain types of e-mail messages from getting through, especially those e-mail messages having computer viruses. However, in general, e-mail messages flow across the Internet without the performance of any type of authorization or authentication.
A cable service provider or a satellite service provider may authorize which channels to broadcast and/or to be de-encrypted by a particular user based on the subscription information for that user. In general, a set-top box in a user's home receives whatever is broadcast to it based on the subscription of the user. A service provider could temporarily override the subscription limits and broadcast certain channels to a user's set-top box to let the user try those channels out. In reality, the user essentially has no control of what channels may be broadcast to him.
In general, when dealing with IP-based networks and communication through devices that have IP addresses, sharing any kind of digital media invites or facilitates different ways for rogue service providers or rogue networks to be formed to imitate and to copy legitimate services on the network.
Further limitations and disadvantages of conventional and traditional approaches will become apparent to one of skill in the art, through comparison of such systems with the present invention as set forth in the remainder of the present application with reference to the drawings.